Christian Dior

“Couture is above all a marriage of form and fabric. A well-cut dress is a dress that has been cut very little: this is one of the major secrets of couture.”

By Venetia Bell

From a wealthy family in Granville, Normandy that moved to Paris when he was five, Christian Dior’s parents destined him for diplomacy. He duly entered France’s prestigious Ecole des Sciences Politiques, which he left sans regret and sans degree three years later. He opened an art gallery in 1928, bringing him into direct contact with the artists, writers and musicians of his time: Picasso, Matisse, Dalí, Giacometti, Mirò, Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, Max Jacob, Francis Poulenc.

Three years later, his mother and brother were dead and his father was ruined in the Wall Street crash. The family house was sold (it now houses the Christian Dior museum). In 1934, he had no choice but to close the gallery and sell the paintings and his own collection at cut-rate prices. (Later in his memoirs he humorously bemoaned having to sell those now inestimably valuable paintings that his family had thought worthless!)

Thanks to the generosity of his friends and the sale of a few paintings, Dior was able to live for ten years before entering the world of fashion without any formal training. Clothes and fabrics were not completely unknown to him after a carefree childhood in the company of his elegantly dressed mother. His gift for drawing and a familiarity with architecture enabled him to design hats for chic milliners, dresses for Nina Ricci, Balenciaga and Schiaparelli and costumes for the theatre and films.

He found work with Robert Piguet, grand couturier of the 1930s, signing three collections. He was drafted when World War II broke out and after leaving the army in 1942 he joined the grand couturier Lucien Lelong as chief designer along with Balmain. Dior, as an employee of Lelong - who tried to preserve the French fashion industry under the German occupation - designed clothes for the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators, as did other couture houses, including Patou, Lanvin and Nina Ricci.

Dior’s sister had joined the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo and incarcerated at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was liberated in May 1945. Dior later named the perfume “Miss Dior” in her honour.

That same year, textile industrialist Marcel Boussac invested in the project for a fashion house under Dior’s own name at number 30, avenue Montaigne. It was a judicious investment: previously three metres of fabric were needed to make a dress, Dior’s needed twenty!

The line’s actual name in his first collection, presented in 1947, was Corolle (corolla or circlet of flower petals in English), but the phrase “New Look” was coined by the editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Dior’s designs were longer and more voluptuous than the skimpy shapes of the World War II styles, imposed by the rations on fabric. His designs emphasized the waist and the hips, giving his models a very shapely look.

Christian Dior with model Sylvie, circa 1948.

Courtesy of Christian Dior

Grace Kelly with Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart at the premiere of Rear Window in 1954. She is wearing the Caracas dress, Christian Dior–New York collection, Spring–Summer 1954

© The Kobal Collection/Aurimages

Christian Dior by John Galliano, J’adore, Dress, Haute Couture, 2008 (custom-made)

Photo © Laziz Hamani. Christian Dior Parfums collection, Paris

Christian Dior (1905–57), Avril, Dress, Haute Couture, Spring Summer 1955, A Line.

Photo © Laziz Hamani. Dior Héritage collection, Paris

Initially, women protested because they were used to showing their legs during the war. The amount of fabric used in a single dress or suit was also criticized. Chanel was particularly biting: “Look how ridiculous these women are, wearing clothes by a man who doesn’t know women, never had one, and dreams of being one,” she said of the “New Look”. Opposition ceased as wartime shortages ended. Dior had revolutionized women’s clothing and put Paris back on the fashion map.

Throughout his career and his varied collections, Dior’s creations startled and fascinated fashion aficionados. Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton immortalised them in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair… and they were worn by stars: Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, who famously said to Alfred Hitchcock when he offered her a role in Stage Fright, “no Dior, no Dietrich”. And lastly the most unforgettable of them all: Princess Grace of Monaco…

From the moment she met Prince Rainier, Grace Kelly knew that Dior’s creations were meant for her. At the engagement ball at the Waldorf Astoria she wore a specially designed gown and posed that same year for an official portrait in his haute couture model “Colinette”. Grace of Monaco was a woman of her times. The Dior style was a perfect fit with the prestige of her role as royalty, while allowing her freedom in her active life in the service of others.

More recently, Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard long personified the mysterious allure of the Dior woman. And the legend continues with the celebrated actress Charlize Theron and the perfume J’adore. Dior’s haute couture dress “Nude” was made to her exact measurements and fashioned by hand with almost 20,000 pearls and more than 250,000 rhinestones requiring more than 200 hours of work. The seams are almost invisible in the 12 metres of chiffon. Breathtaking.